This gallery exhibition and film is the first of three outputs generated from the Function Creeps research project. The project critiques the wellness industry by examining the sociopolitical and cultural consequences of its expansion into management culture, entrepreneurship, the art market, and luxury lifestyle sectors. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s account of the neoliberal turn in governance, the research focuses on the internalisation of neoliberal norms through processes of subjectification. In contrast to earlier projects that examined externally imposed techniques of domination, this work investigates techniques of the self and the role of self-governance in reproducing contemporary forms of power. The output clarifies the project’s research questions, theoretical framework, and emerging findings for public and academic dissemination.

The public exhibition context was an important part of the research, functioning both as a site of display and as a means of testing and refining the project’s critical propositions through public reception and dialogue. In particular, a public artist’s talk at the venue generated sustained discussion around the project’s use of a logo in place of an ostensibly authentic artist’s signature. Audience responses revealed a recurring cognitive dissonance by unsettling received expectations around artistic authenticity, authorship and singularity.

This was a significant research finding in its own right, demonstrating the extent to which branding logics may be criticised at the level of discourse while remaining affectively and culturally embedded in how artistic legitimacy is recognised and valued. The output therefore contributed not only to the dissemination of the research, but also to the generation of further insight. It clarified the project’s motivating questions and critical implications, while producing new evidence of the contradictions through which neoliberal forms of selfhood, authorship and value are negotiated within contemporary art contexts. The output was hosted and co-funded by Kendall Koppe Gallery and RDF seed funding.

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